Democrats Run for the Memory Hole

Take

Robert Francis O’Rourke,

the Texas Democrat running for governor. Following

George Floyd’s

death in 2020 in Minnesota’s largest city, the Minneapolis City Council moved to dismantle the police department. Protesters applauded their action. At a Twin Cities rally, one activist declared: “We’re safer without armed, unaccountable patrols supported by the state hunting black people.”

In response, then-noncandidate O’Rourke said in an interview, “I really love that Black Lives Matter and other protesters have put this front and center, to defund these line items that have overmilitarized our police.” He added that in “necessary cases” he supported “completely dismantling those police forces and rebuilding them.” The Minneapolis council, he opined, “made the right decision.” But after enduring more than a year of fallout from the City Council’s decision, 56% of Minneapolis voters in 2021 rejected a ballot measure to replace their police with a new agency emphasizing public health.

Once he started running for governor last year, Mr. O’Rourke told the Texas Tribune, “I don’t think I’ve ever advocated for defunding the police.” Maybe that’s convenient memory failure. Or maybe Mr. O’Rourke finally recognizes his extreme views don’t play well in Texas. No matter: His words are a matter of public record.

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov.

John Fetterman,

running for the U.S. Senate, is more direct. When GOP ads castigated him for saying “we could reduce our prison population by a third and not make anyone less safe,” he went on Pittsburgh radio to say “that’s just a lie.” Republicans were taking a quote by someone else “out of context,” he claimed. “This is nothing that I’ve believed, and it’s nothing that I’ve advocated.”

But Mr. Fetterman backed the idea of releasing a third of inmates in the state’s prisons at least 14 times, all captured on video. He wasn’t merely drawing attention to someone else’s utterance. He pronounced this wacky view “profound,” saying “we absolutely must” do it.

At least Mr. Fetterman limited it to a third of his state’s jail population. Wisconsin’s Democratic Lt. Gov

Mandela Barnes,

also running for the Senate, in 2012 tried to put an initiative on the ballot to cut Wisconsin’s prison population by 50%. After the 2018 election, he tweeted “cool, let’s cut our prison population in half.”

Mr. Barnes hasn’t walked away from that view, but when GOP Sen.

Ron Johnson

attacked him for “wanting to defund the police” and Republicans hit him for calling to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mr. Barnes responded with an ad calling those critiques “a lie.” Even CNN was having none of it, releasing a KFile exposé concluding he “often signaled his support for such positions.”

Mr. Barnes backed defunding the police as far back as 2012, when he completed a Vote Smart questionnaire saying he favored cutting law enforcement and prison funding. In 2015 he called police officers who don’t live in the communities where they work an “occupying force.” He tried to make the issue sound more palatable, saying in June 2020, “defunding isn’t necessarily as aggressive as a lot of folks paint it.”

Mr. Barnes’ record on ICE is also clear. In 2018 he tweeted that ICE agents were “modern day slave catchers,” retweeted calls for abolishing ICE, and told the Democratic Socialists of America he needed one of their “Abolish ICE” T-shirts. He then circulated a picture of himself with one on social media.

Then there’s Georgia Sen.

Raphael Warnock,

whose problems are more personal. Asked in Friday’s debate about evictions of residents of an apartment complex owned by the church Mr. Warnock serves as pastor, he dismissed it as “false charges” and attacked Republican

Herschel Walker,

saying his opponent was “trying to sully Ebenezer Baptist Church.” But the Washington Free Beacon reported that two days before the debate, the apartment complex filed three eviction proceedings, on top of a dozen such actions it has taken since Covid began. Perhaps Mr. Warnock should stop bearing false witness.

Credit Democrats with realizing that their past views and actions are indefensible to voters. But what they’ve embraced is a politician’s desperate last recourse: Try to shove the obnoxious statement or action into an Orwellian memory hole by calling any reminder of it a lie, then hope left-wing allies forgive their lack of courage. I expect that by Nov. 8 Democrats will find that voters’ memories are better than they wished they were.

Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).